http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1006-06.htmJERUSALEM – Israel’s plan to withdraw from occupied Gaza will prevent a Palestinian state emerging and freeze peacemaking, and all with Washington’s approval, a key adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Wednesday. Adviser Dov Weisglass effectively dismissed an international “road map” peace plan. A Palestinian girl helps to carry her six-month-old brother, who were both wounded after an Israeli tank fired a shell while they were sleeping in their Beit Lahiya home, north of Gaza Strip, October 6, 2004. Israeli tanks shelled the town in the northern Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, killing three Palestinians and wounding 10 children in their houses, witnesses and medics said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem His remarks, coinciding with a massive Israeli offensive into Gaza, will help Sharon win over far-right foes opposed to Gaza “disengagement” and challenging his grip on power. “The significance of our disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians,” Dov Weisglass said in an interview published in Haaretz daily Wednesday. “When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state … Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda,” Weisglass said. Palestinian leaders condemned the comments. “I believe he has revealed the true intentions of Sharon. We told the quartet (of U.S.-led peace mediators) eight months ago that the Gaza plan was designed to undermine their road map,” said Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat. Weisglass said there would be no talks on key issues such as Palestinian refugees, borders and the status of Jerusalem in the foreseeable future. “And all this with authority and permission, all with a presidential blessing.” President Bush in April approved Sharon’s plan to pull settlers from tiny Gaza in 2005 while holding onto larger Jewish enclaves in the West Bank, displacing the “road map” which promises Palestinians a viable state. “By the way the Americans read the situation, the blame fell on the Palestinians, not on us, Arik (Sharon) grasped that (the Palestinians) would not leave us alone … and time was not on our side,” Haaretz quoted Weisglass as saying. “What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns,” he said. IMPASSE Weisglass blamed Palestinian suicide bombings and militant violence for the diplomatic vacuum. Palestinians blame Israeli offensives as well as continued settlement activity in the West Bank. Israel captured both lands in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel’s dovish opposition said peace should come first. “These stalling games will come at our expense. Can Israel expect to stop diplomatic processes around the world? We should not delude ourselves,” said Labor Party leader Shimon Peres. “Until we have peace we (cannot expect) calm and security.” Weisglass said 190,000 of the 240,000 settlers would stay in place under Sharon’s plan which suggests 40,000 more settlers would leave than the “disengagement” plan previously foresaw. Palestinian leaders say “disengagement” is a gambit to dash their statehood dream by confining 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank to patches of land separated by settlement blocs. They fear Sharon feels free to do as he pleases given Bush’s preoccupation with a re-election campaign in which he will need Jewish votes, and with a troubled U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Israeli armored forces stormed into northern Gaza a week ago in a concerted bid to smash militants responsible for frequent rocket fire into nearby Israeli border areas. Seventy-five Palestinians have been killed, 30 of them civilians, according to local hospital figures. Three Israelis including a woman settler have been killed. Washington Tuesday vetoed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to Israel’s offensive, saying it failed to mention Palestinian attacks. Related
US Vetoes Resolution Calling for Israeli Halt to Gaza Operations by Gerald Nadler Oct 7 2004http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1006-07.htmThe United States vetoed an Arab-backed UN Security Council resolution calling for a halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Last night’s vote in the 15-member Security Council was 11 in favour, one against, and three abstentions by Britain, Germany and Romania.
Palestinian medics carry four children with the youngest being six months old (R), who were wounded after an Israeli tank fired a shell while they were sleeping at their home, in Beit Lahiya town north of Gaza Strip October 6, 2004. Israeli tanks shelled a town in the in the northern Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, killing three Palestinians and wounding 10 children in their houses, witnesses and medics said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem The US called the resolution “lopsided and unbalanced” but its veto was followed by a chorus of denunciations.
Israel launched the operation six days ago after a Palestinian rocket killed two children in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. The drive into Gaza has left at least 75 Palestinians dead.
The US Ambassador John Danforth cast the veto after British and German efforts to find compromise language failed. He said of the resolution: “It is dangerously disingenuous because of its many material omissions. Because of this lack of balance, because of these omissions, the resolution lacks credibility and deserves a ‘no’ vote.”
Mr Danforth said that while condemning Israeli acts of violence, it did not mention that the Palestinians have fired more than 200 rockets against Israeli towns this year alone. He said: “There’s an old saying that silence means consent. The silence here is deafening.”
The resolution put the blame on Israel “and absolves terrorists in the Middle East – people who shoot rockets into civilian areas, people who are responsible for killing children.”
Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative, said that “the council failed to take a stand against the bloodshed … by the Israeli forces” because of Washington’s veto.
He said the veto was the seventh by the Bush administration on the Israeli-Palestinians conflict and the 29th since 1976. He heard much talk about the two Israeli children killed in the rocket attack, but none about a 13-year-old Palestinian girl that he said was riddled with 30 bullets as she walked to school.
Citing the high casualty toll and extensive destruction during the Israeli offensive, Algeria’s UN Ambassador Abdallah Baali, the only Arab member of the council, said, “It is a sad day for the Palestinians and it is a sad day for justice.”
The resolution would have condemned “the broad military incursion and attacks by the Israeli occupying forces in the area of northern Gaza Strip, including in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, resulting in extensive human casualties and destruction and exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation.”
The defeated draft demanded “the immediate cessation of all military operations in the area of northern Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from that area.”
It called for a cessation of violence, adherence to international humanitarian law, and for Israel and the Palestinians to immediately implement the long-stalled “road map” to peace backed by the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.
The Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman defended the Israeli operation, saying Israel has a right to defend its citizens.
“All we are trying to do in this operation is to try to get those missiles out of the range of our cities and out of the bodies of our children. And I think anything we do should be justified because it is the clearest manifestation of self-defence.”